Wednesday, August 14, 2013

MSAA Tradeshow

Every summer, the first week of August, a few of us attend the Midwest Ski Areas Association Summer Trade show and Conference. This year's event was held last week at Alpine Valley Resort in Wisconsin near Milwaukee. This event is a great source of information and networking for those in the ski and snowboard industry. It's conferences like this where we receive a lot of our information regarding legislative and safety issues affecting our industry as well information from vendors on the latest equipment & supplies. We try to spread out of our small team of attendees at this conference every year to attend as many of informational sessions as possible. The topics of these sessions include things like marketing trends, legal issues, chairlift safety and overall guest safety, snow making, grooming, rental operations, terrain parks, ski school and much more. Above all, these events are great networking events for people like me where we get to talk with other ski area operators from around the Midwest, hear about their season last year, what worked, what didn't work, what new things are planned for this year and so on. We are all genuine in attempting to learn from each other because we all have a vested interest in growing the sport of skiing and snowboarding. Below are some photos from the conference so all of you can see a glimpse of what it's like to attend a conference like this. Pay special attention to the photo of the big red Piston Bully Winch Cat groomer because you will see that exact machine grooming the slopes of Welch this year!